Frog Rock has an explosive history. As the story goes, the boulder was once in the way of a Bainbridge Island farmer’s construction project, and so he hired an explosives expert to blow it up.

Frog Rock on Bainbridge Island.(Photo: Nathan Pilling / Kitsap Sun)

The blast blew out the windows of a nearby vehicle, but it did its job and split the rock in half. The boulder, now boulders, became known as “Split Rock.” In the 1950s, when island roads were being paved, the two rocks were once again in the way, and so a workman picked up the smaller chunk and set it atop the larger one.

In a 1997 story about the Port Madison community, Colleen Leahy attributes the iconic rock’s paint job to then-Bainbridge High School seniors Bob Green and Ellen Barnes, who did the work at about 3 a.m. one June morning in 1971. In a long-running graduation tradition, Bainbridge seniors typically paint their names and other phrases on island streets. Green and Barnes decided to try something else.

“’Paint night’ had long been a tradition with graduating seniors, but Green and Barnes decided to paint the rocks at the intersection of Phelps (Road) and Madison (Avenue) instead of the streets,” Leahy wrote. “The following year they protected the rock from paint night, and since then neighbors in Port Madison have maintained Frog Rock. Last year Green, who later married Barnes and moved to Port Madison, gave the rock a fresh coat of paint with the help of his 14-year-old son Michael.”

Frog Rock lives on today. It’s one of my favorite hidden gems on Bainbridge Island. In this episode of the Bremerton Beat Blast, I’ll take you to five others tucked away throughout the island.

Special thanks go to Josh Woodward for the music in this episode. The track is called “Free to Fly” and is available for free on Josh’s website.

-Nathan Pilling

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